The new Mythical Island expansion for Pokémon TCG Pocket only dropped yesterday, and fans have already spotted a clear winner: Celebi ex and Serperior, a pair of grass type Pokémon that like to flip coins and land massive attacks. Here’s how the new deck works, and how you can take it down.
All Pokémon sets shake up the meta with new cards, and Mythical Island for Pokémon TCG Pocket is no exception. We included Celebi Ex in our guide to Mythical Island chase cards, if only because it’s the only immersive art card in the set – but it’s also a powerhouse. Here’s how it works.
How the Celebi Ex Serperior deck works
Celebi Ex a basic grass type Pokémon with 130HP. Its ‘Powerful Bloom’ attack costs one grass and one colorless energy, and lets you flip a number of coins equal to the energy attached to it, dealing 50 damage per success.
When there’s only two energy attached, that’s just the same as Pinsir – hardly one of the most powerful Pokémon cards. But there’s no limit to how much energy you can attach, or to how many coins you can flip. Once you’re up to four energy, the attack hits like Zapdos Ex. And with Serperior in play, you can huge amounts of energy incredibly quickly.
Serperior is a Stage Two grass-type Pokémon with an expensive attack and 110 health, but an incredible Ability: all grass-type energy attached to your grass Pokémon counts as two energy. This is the best energy acceleration in the game, as it retroactively doubles every piece of energy you’ve attached so far, as well as everything you add afterwards.
How to beat Celebi Ex Serperior
The deck has two main weak points: the difficulty of getting a Stage Two Serperior into play, and Celebi Ex’s 130 HP. Celebi Ex is also weak against fire: 110 damage from a fire attack will one-shot it. Your goal is to assemble a 130 damage attack faster than your opponent can pull out their Serperior, probably from a Basic or Stage One Pokémon.
Arcanine Ex is one way to do this, requiring three energy to deal 120 damage. If you don’t want to stake two victory points on a Pokémon Ex, you can also use Flareon. A fellow Stage One fire type, its Flamethrower attack deals 110 damage, just the right amount to KO a Celebi Ex. As always for fire decks, Moltres Ex is an essential way to get energy onto your Pokémon quickly.
You could also try using Giovanni to pump up the attack on a regular Arcanine, or Blaine to increase the damage from Genetic Apex Ninetails or the Mythical Island Magmar. As you need to have the Trainer in hand at exactly the right time to make those strategies work, we don’t recommend this approach, except as a stopgap until you can collect the other cards you need.
Other colors have answers too, with Pokémon that punish your opponent for stacking lots of energy. Genetic Apex Alakazam and the new Mythical Island Exeggutor both have attacks that will one-shot a Celebi Ex when it has three or more energy attached to it. They also have enough HP to survive an attack from Celebi Ex while it has two or less energy attached to it!
For more insight into great Pokémon cards, check out our guide to the most expensive Pokémon cards ever printed. To keep up to date with Pokémon TCG Pocket news, follow Wargamer on Google News!
Source: Wargamer
